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BARCELONA, SPAIN – MARCH 2: The Amazon ads logo, the advertising solutions service formerly known as AMD or Amazon Marketing Services, during the Mobile World Congress 2023 on March 2, 2023, in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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Amazon’s online advertising business continues to boom amid growing investor concerns that the Israel-Hamas war could negatively impact the world economy.

As part of Amazon’s latest financial results on Thursday, the online retail giant said that its ad business recorded $12.06 billion in revenue during the third quarter, marking a 26% jump from the year-earlier period.

Analysts polled by StreetAccount were expecting Amazon’s advertising business to generate $11.6 billion in third-quarter revenue.

Amazon’s overall quarterly sales jumped 13% year over year to $143.1 billion.

Investors closely monitor Amazon’s online advertising unit, which now accounts for 7.5% of the global digital ad market, according to Insider Intelligence. Alphabet is still the digital advertiser leader with 28.4% share of the world online ad market, while Meta accounts for 20.1%, the research firm said.

Amazon has been able to capitalize on the digital advertising market due in part to the residual effects of Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update, which hurt the online advertising businesses of social media firms like Meta, Snap and X (formerly known as Twitter). Indeed, many retailers have shifted their advertising budgets this year from Meta to Amazon due to a perceived weakening in the online ad targeting capabilities of the Facebook parent due to the Apple update.

But Meta has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence this year to improve its online advertising platform, which has led to more companies, particularly Chinese retailers, to increase their spending on Facebook and Instagram promotions.

Indeed, Meta said this week that its third-quarter sales soared 23% year over year to $34.15 billion, which was the fastest rate of growth for the social networking giant since 2021.

Although Meta reported strong third-quarter earnings, the company’s finance head, Susan Li, revealed during a call with analysts that the unpredictability of the Middle East crisis led the company to widen its fourth-quarter guidance by $1 billion to now reflect a range between $36.5 billion to $40 billion.

Meta shares were down over 2% on Thursday reflecting investor concern about the Israel-Hamas war.

Alphabet reported third-quarter earnings this week and said that its Google advertising revenue jumped 9% year over year to $59.65 billion while YouTube ad sales rose 12% to $7.95 billion. The tech giant’s overall sales grew 11% to $76.69 billion during the quarter.

Snap also said this week as part of its third-quarter earnings that it would not give formal guidance “due to the unpredictable nature of war.”

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Arm shares dip 8% on revenue miss

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Arm shares dip 8% on revenue miss

The replica of the ARM is an electronic chip board during a collaborative ceremony launching a partnership between Malaysia and ARM Holdings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 5, 2025.

Hari Anggara | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Arm Holdings shares dipped as much as 9% in after-hours trading on the company’s first-quarter earnings results Wednesday.

 Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:

  • Earnings per share: 35 cents vs. 35 cents expected.
  • Revenue: $1.05 billion vs. $1.06 billion expected.

The company said it expects second-quarter revenue in the range of $1.01 billion to $1.11 billion, which was in line with $1.05 billion expected by analysts tracked by LSEG.

ARM is a chip technology firm that sells architecture for making chips that power billions of devices, including Apple and Qualcomm‘s chips.

During the quarter, Samsung launched the Galaxy Flip 7 based on the Exynos 2500, built on Arm’s compute subsystem platform.

CEO Rene Haas said in an interview with Reuters that the company was “consciously deciding to invest more heavily,” suggesting the company is considering designing its own processors.

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Qualcomm beats on earnings, highlights growth in Meta smartglasses

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Qualcomm beats on earnings, highlights growth in Meta smartglasses

Cristiano Amon, CEO & President, Qualcomm, on Centre Stage during day one of Web Summit 2024 at the MEO Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.

Shauna Clinton | Sportsfile | Getty Images

Qualcomm reported fiscal third-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street expectations and provided a stronger-than-expected guide for the current quarter. Qualcomm shares slid in extended trading.

Here’s how the chipmaker did for the quarter ending June 29 compared to LSEG consensus expectations:

  • Earnings per share: $2.77 adjusted versus $2.71 expected
  • Revenue: $10.37 billion versus $10.35 billion expected

In the current quarter, Qualcomm said it expected $2.85 per share at the midpoint of adjusted earnings on $10.7 billion in revenue at the midpoint. Analysts polled by LSEG were expecting $2.83 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.35 billion in revenue.

Net income during the quarter ending in June was $2.66 billion, or $2.43 per share, versus $2.13 billion, or $1.88 per share a year ago.

Qualcomm’s most important business is selling chips for smartphones under its Snapdragon brand, including the central processor and modem for high-end devices made by Samsung. It also provides modems to Apple. Its handset chip business reported $6.33 billion in revenue during the quarter, just shy of Wall Street expectations of $6.44 billion.

Qualcomm expects to lose Apple as a customer for its modem business in the coming years. But the company has been working to diversify its business by making chips for other devices, including Windows PCs and Meta‘s Quest virtual-reality headsets and Meta Ray-Bans smart glasses.

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Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon highlighted the company’s work with Meta in a short interview on Wednesday.

He said that making chips for devices like Meta’s Ray-Bans smart glasses was a good example of the chipmaker’s AI strategy, which was to embrace “personal AI,” or AI applications that run on devices, not the cloud.

Qualcomm reports its Meta revenues under its “Internet of Things” division, which had $1.68 billion in revenue during the quarter.

Amon referenced Mark Zuckerberg‘s AI vision statement Wednesday that focused on “personal superintelligence,” saying “the upside we had in the quarter within IoT is what we do in with smart glasses.”

CFO Akash Palkhiwala said that Meta had stronger-than-expected chip consumption during the quarter.

On Monday, Ray-Ban parent EssilorLuxottica said that sales of the smart glasses more than tripled on an annual basis.

“Mark put out a video today, just with a very clear vision of how they see personal AI and super intelligence evolving, and we are a key part of making that division happen,” Palkhiwala said.

Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are powered by a Qualcomm chip. Qualcomm, Samsung and Google are working on smart glasses, according to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Amon also said Qualcomm would start to provide data about how much its chip business is growing without Apple — about 15% this year, he said.

Qualcomm is also looking to expand into data centers and sell versions of its chips that can be used for deploying artificial intelligence, Amon said on a call with an analysts. He said that Qualcomm was already in discussions with a major cloud company — called a hyperscaler — to supply AI chips. He said that Qualcomm could start to see revenues in its fiscal 2028.

“While we are in the early stages of this expansion, we are engaged with multiple potential customers,” Among said. “We are currently in advanced discussions with a leading hyperscaler.”

The company’s automotive business has been highlighted by Amon as one of the biggest growth opportunities for the company, but in the third quarter, it grew 21% to $984 million, below the 24% growth rate of the company’s IoT business.

Qualcomm’s other major division is QTL, which includes licensing fees for technology that Qualcomm developed and patented, including parts of the 5G standard. Overall, QTL revenues rose 11% to $1.32 billion.

Qualcomm said it spent just under $1 billion on cash dividends and $2.8 billion repurchasing 19 million shares of its stock during the quarter.

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Meta’s Reality Labs posts $4.53 billion loss in second quarter

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Meta’s Reality Labs posts .53 billion loss in second quarter

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presents Orion AR Glasses as he makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta’s Reality Labs, the unit tasked with building the futuristic metaverse, continues bleeding money.

The social media company reported its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday and revealed that Reality Labs logged an operating loss of $4.53 billion while recording $370 million in sales during the period. Analysts were projecting that unit to post a second-quarter operating loss of $4.99 billion while generating $381 million in sales.

The Reality Labs division oversees the Quest line of virtual reality headsets in addition to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which are jointly developed with the French-Italian eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. Meta wants Reality Labs to create cutting-edge products similar to the prototype Orion augmented reality glasses that could underpin a new, immersive computing platform.

But developing VR, AR and other new devices is an expensive endeavor, with the Reality Labs division logging nearly $70 billion in cumulative losses since late 2020. Meta in April said Reality Labs recorded an operating loss of $4.2 billion during the first quarter while bringing in $412 million in sales.

Although the Quest VR headsets haven’t become breakout hits, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are showing signs of success.

EssilorLuxottica on Monday said Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sales more than tripled year over year for the first half of 2025. The eyewear giant and Meta debuted in June the new Oakley Meta smart glasses, which is the latest product spawned from their partnership.

Meta said in April that an undisclosed number of Reality Labs employees who were part of its Oculus Studios VR and AR software unit were laid off.

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